Bill Gates has been speaking out against climate change, this time with a post about electric vehicles, and Volkswagen’s CEO says he agrees with the billionaire philanthropist.
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Volkswagen CEO to Bill Gates: advise governments
In a LinkedIn post reflecting on Bill Gates' article about electric vehicles, Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess called on the Microsoft co-founder to advise governments about how to reduce carbon emissions caused by transportation. He also criticized Germany's slowness in abandoning coal-burning power plants.
The Volkswagen CEO said Bill Gates understands the "CO2 logic of the mobility sector." He also said Gates knows what to do and urged him to "advise governments how to regulate and what to promote."
In his own post on LinkedIn, Gates renewed his warning that climate change could cause more damage to the world and deaths than the coronavirus pandemic.
Diess said changing to carbon-free electricity is an important step in effectively pushing back against climate change. He added that Germany's plan to end use of coal power by 2038 "is for a rich, tech-leading country by far not ambitious enough."
Volkswagen pushes into EVs
Bloomberg notes that Volkswagen has pushed into electric vehicles hard since its diesel emissions scandal in 2015. The German automaker has invested €33 billion (US$39 billion) in the last five years to build up the biggest fleet of electric vehicles.
By 2025, Volkswagen wants to slash the carbon footprint of its cars and light-commercial vehicles by 30% from where it stood in 2015. The automaker wants to be carbon neutral by 2050.
Volkswagen offers the e-Golf and e-up! as all-electric vehicles. The company plans to launch a new generation of all-electric vehicles as early this year. The new series will be called the I.D. family, and the vehicles will be based on the company's new Modular electric drive matrix.
All of the new I.D. models are expected to have a range that's comparable with the automaker's gas-powered models. The first vehicles in the new lineup will be the I.D. compact and the I.D. CROZZ SUV, which are slated to debut this year, according to Volkswagen's website.
The next model in the I.D. series will be the zero-emission I.D. BUZZ van, which is slated for launch in 2022.
